"You know, man," said Homeless Jack, "I used to worry more about all those people of ours choosing not to have children, but I don't worry quite so much now. I mean, I still worry and think the best answer is for all of us to have as many children as possible, but maybe what's going on is that nature is culling our population and distilling us out and up.

"Maybe, if people are told the truth that they need to multiply, but if they ignore the truth and don't multiply, then, perhaps, that failure on their part means they're the ones who shouldn't multiply so their genes will be removed from the gene pool."

"I'm not sure you're right," I said. "It looks to me like a lot of very healthy, smart and attractive people are not having kids. I don't know how losing their genes and not having them multiply to their fullest can be good for our survival as a people."

"The greater part of me agrees with you, man," said Jack, "and maybe I'm just trying to find something positive in our declining birth rate, but think about it this way for a minute: evolutionary fitness--you know, survival of the fittest--is defined by results. I mean, you can't look at people and say, this one is strong and smart and more fit than this other one who looks weak and seems stupid. You can't really know which is the fittest in an evolutionary sense unless you see which one has reproduced in such a way that his genes survive in greater numbers in the future.

"The one who looks fit now or who seems fit, may not reproduce. By definition, such a person is not fit. It's all about reproduction and multiplying, man. Those who we think are the smartest, the strongest, the best, the richest, the luckiest, the whatever superlative you want to use; are the least fit if they don't reproduce. If they haven't passed on their genes, they've failed nature's most important test and, from an evolutionary standpoint, they might as well be walking fertilizer moving around until they die and deposit their minerals back into the earth. They'll have absolutely no genetic impact on us as a people no matter what they did when they were alive. They will live no more within us. Maybe the ones who intentionally don't reproduce after being told the truth have some defective gene that keeps them from seeing the truth, and maybe it's better that such a gene be removed from the gene pool through attrition.

"Those who reproduce and multiply and pass on more of their genes are, again by definition, more fit. All of us alive today are the fittest for our kind, man. And, I mean all of us. We wouldn't be alive today if we weren't the fittest. We're the last ones standing in the struggle for survival, at least at this time. But, check back in a hundred or a thousand years and see which of our genes are still around. Nature constantly winnows living things, including human beings, and it does it without emotion.

"See, this is where some of think we need to intervene and will our own evolution. I mean, we've been given big brains--instead of fangs and claws--in order to survive, so it just makes sense that we start using our gray matter to find the way to survive and not just let blind nature keep on sorting things out in the eternal spinning.

"Speaking of spinning, man, I saw a news article recently about how some scientists say the earth goes through extinction cycles about every 1 million years when the axis of the planet tips a bit and then about every 2.5 million years when the earth's orbit is almost a perfect circle.

"That's what I've been telling you about the spinning. It builds and it destroys and it does it over and over again. The universe is like a self-cleaning oven, man. Everything is spinning and everything seeks to make a circle. When the circle is complete, things change again. If you ask me, man, because we can think about these things means that we can avoid our own destruction. And, this is true both in the larger cosmic sense and in the smaller sense right here on earth as we look at what it really means to survive. Genes are us. If we are to survive, our genes must survive.

"We may be the smallest of the major distinct groups on the planet--only about 10% of humans are descended from the indigenous peoples of Europe, but that still means there are many millions of us. It has been the history of our people that some of our sub-groups will get strong for a time, and then others will take the lead and they'll be strong for a time and then others. We move forward sort of like an amoeba, man. We put out a pseudopod over here--say, the Greeks, and we move forward on it, then it retracts and we put out another over there, say the English, and then it retracts and another one goes forward and so on. Right now, it may be, but I'm not sure of this, that it could be the Russians and their cousins from Eastern Europe who are the pseudopod that is out front. They still seem to have vigor and life in them, while when we look at some of the descendents of our ancient tribes, we see some groups that are effete and lacking true vigor.

"Anyway, I mentioned the Russians and their cousins for a reason. They're comin' on strong in sports, man, and especially in boxing. Now, this may not mean much to most people, but boxing has often been the sport that has indicated the vigor of a people. Once, the Irish were the best boxers. That was at a time when they were expanding and sending forth millions of their people around the world. Then, they stopped boxing. Okay, so you're saying that this is a real stretch, but if you think about it, man, you'll see that when a people is full of expansion and is full of self-confidence and, yes, full of fight, then they bubble up those from their midst who take part in rough and tumble and take no prisoner types of sports. A vibrant expanding people isn't into tidily winks, man.

"And, now comes news from Russia that the government is moving in very direct and aggressive ways to get their people to multiply to stop the depopulation problem that has been facing that nation. I know, it sounds like a paradox. First, I said they're expanding and then I said that they have a depopulation problem. Well, there's no paradox in it man, but it would take too long to explain why, right now. Just take my word on it. The Russians may save us all, man. Of course, they may run right over the sissy subgroups among us who are out traipsing through the flowers and looking dreamily at the sky instead of having kids, but that's the way it may have to be.

"Here's something else in the mix, man. I just saw another news article, and this one says some people in the suburbs in the U.S. are now considering large families to be status symbols. Man, I hope that's true. The more kids the better. And, these ones with the large families will inherit the earth.

# # #

THREE BOOKS BY HARD TO PIGEONHOLE H. MILLARD

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Ourselves Alone & Homeless Jack's Religion
messages of ennui and meaning in post-american america by H. Millard
In Ourselves Alone and Homeless Jack's Religion, H. Millard, the hard to pigeonhole author of The Outsider and Roaming the Wastelands, has put together some of his category bending commentaries on post-American America. The commentaries deal with politics, philosophy, free speech, genocide, religion and other topics in Millard's edgy style and lead up to Homeless Jack's Religion, in which Homeless Jack lays out revelations he found in a dumpster on skid row. Browse Before You BuyISBN: 0-595-32646-3